All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [21]
They let him fall to the ground this time, stared at each other, and sighed.
"Hold up, there!"
One moment the road ahead was empty, but the next, a stern-looking, ragged crone with the largest, wartiest nose Torm had ever seen was standing calmly in front of his cantering horse, hand raised, bidding him halt.
Startled, the thief hauled hard on the reins. The war horse under him skidded in the dust as it reared, bugling, and came to a halt, lashing out with steel-shod hooves.
The woman regarded it calmly. "An excitable animal-and you must be the illustrious Torm that the ladies of Twilight Hall have told me so much about." She turned away, hands on hips, and then turned back to him and asked curiously, "Did you really get a certain part of your anatomy caught in a closet door in Zhentil Keep, or was that just a fireside tale?"
Torm sputtered. He'd just noticed that the woman, in her kerchief and ragged dress, was standing in midair, her muddy, ill-fitting boots a good three feet off the ground. A merry gale of laughter came from Sharantyr, Belkram, and Sylune as they reined their mounts in around him. Itharr merely shook his head in smiling silence.
"Well met, Margrueth," Sylune said, eyes dancing in welcome. The old woman looked her up and down.
"Got yerself a new body, have you? Hmmph. No one offers me a new body to replace this old, aching barrel! I could get used to yours, really I could. Silver hair and all."
"You wouldn't want to go through what I have," Sylune told her softly. "Really, you wouldn't."
"Gods, girl-I know that!" Margrueth told her. "I'm old and ugly, not witless! Just envious, that's all."
"If you're a sorceress," Torm asked her curiously, "why don't you choose any looks you want?"
Margrueth glared at him sourly. "That would work for snaring a man for a night of pleasure-if, like some folk here, stolen nights of pleasure were what I wanted!"
She let the rebuke hang in the air between them, but Torm merely shrugged, so the old Harper went on. "Sooner or later, though-with my luck, sooner-the one I was with'd see the real me. I'd not hide it, mind; the real me is the one I'm proud of. Some of us value honesty over deceit."
"Some of us must be fools," Torm returned sharply, causing Rathan to chuckle as he slowed his horse to join the group of riders.
"Fool I may be," Margrueth told him, "but I could be in worse straits than this!" She gestured at her nose, and swept her hand down at her fat, shapeless body.
"How?" Torm asked, falling into the trap.
"I could have your looks," she told him sweetly, and turned away. Then she turned back again. "It did get caught in that door, didn't it?"
There was a general hoot of laughter, and Torm snarled and urged his mount forward-only to find that the stout old woman flashed through the air to block his way once more.
"I stopped you for a reason, Lord Torm," she told him severely. "Beyond this point our traps start, and the road ceases to be safe-even for thieves with clever tongues and more luck than Tymora gives anyone! Yonder is Swords Creek."
Torm looked at the little rivulet meandering its muddy way across the fields, and asked curiously, "Why Swords Creek for our stand? Is it just a place easily found among all these fields?"
"Mistledale tradition," the captain of the Riders said from behind him. She brought her horse to a halt in a wild thudding of hooves. "On these hanks many battles were fought of old."
"And we Harpers've been here since yestereve, preparing it for one more," Margrueth added. "Water spells to make the ground sodden and turn wet spots into bogs to break Zhent cavalry charges, wild magic areas there and there-no, Torm, you can't see them- for the foe to halt in, and suchlike."
* 'We Harpers'?" Torm asked. "Aside from you, I can see only two men."
"Ah, that's because they're not done yet," the old woman told him. The others're in hiding already."
"Hiding? Where?" Torm asked, looking around at apparently empty fields. "Are they all mages using invisibility?"
"No. Not one," she replied with a